ALTEX TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION — Environmental Protection Agency SBIR Phase I: 17-NCER-5A

Description

Altex’s Renewable Bioplastics Production (RBP) technology meets the Greener Plastic Manufacturing needs; to eliminate harmful-petrochemical feed sources, to accomplish toxic-free, low-energy, low cost bioplastics production, to reduce Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, and to have environment friendly-biodegradable bioplastics. Altex’s proposed RBP technology combines a novel feeding-sizing-pretreatment process, with a 1-step microbial conversion, to produce bioplastics from any lignocellulosic material. The RBP process is technically feasible because; it’s feed-flexible, the whole plant structure (cellulose, hemicellulose, lignin) is utilized for bioplastics production, resulting in large yield, and finally the process utilizes a cost effective microbial pathway to produce bioplastics. Additionally, everyone that currently uses petroleum-sourced plastics are the end users for bioplastics. Currently, bioplastics represent only 1% of the 320 MM tonnes of plastic produced annually. In comparison to existing bioplastics production technologies, the RBP technology produces bioplastics at 30% lower cost, and reduces GHG emissions by 407 MM tons/year.